PQ Leader Jean-François Lisée gestures during his opening speech at the first day of the Parti Québécois national council meeting in Quebec City on Saturday, Jan. 14, 2017.Clement Allard / The Canadian Press

QUEBEC — It took former cabinet minister Joseph Facal to point out the obvious: the good ship Parti Québécois is taking on water.

And with only 16 months to the general election, time is running out to pump out the hold.

With a clearly shaken PQ caucus gathering in Quebec City for a unscheduled meeting Tuesday to dissect Saturday’s stunning rejection by Québec solidaire of any form of alliance with them, the question now for the party is the same as it was when Jean-François Lisée took over a year ago.

What next?

Having veered to the right and then to the left, dropped the sovereignty referendum talk, appealed to minorities, reached out to environmentalists by opposing big oil and soft-peddling identity politics — all to woo more ‘progressive,’ voters to the PQ’s rainbow coalition — the PQ finds itself no further ahead.

In fact, as veteran analyst Michel C. Auger noted, since Lisée took over the PQ in October 2016 the party has lost a point in the polls per month, slipping from 30 per cent support in November to 23 per cent in last weekend’s Léger poll for the Journal de Montréal.

Worse, instead of spending time flogging its platform with voters, it has lost previous weeks bogged down in complex and ultimately fruitless negotiations with QS which, along with the Quebec Liberals and Coalition Avenir Québec, emerge as the winners of this most arduous saga.

Tuesday, at a news conference wrapping up the caucus that had all the makings of a damage control operation, Lisée conceded time has been lost. He also said for the first time he expected a closer vote Sunday on the convergence questions at the QS policy convention.

“We knew it was a hard road, it was not the easy road,” Lisée said. “And the strength of the refusal is a bit surprising since 87 per cent of their electorate was in favour.”

In fact, the 600 QS delegates overwhelmingly rejected the convergence idea after indulging themselves in an angry show trial of everything the party has done over the last 20 years including the doomed charter of values.

Arriving in the morning, Lisée’s response shifted through the day from a few well-placed angry uppercuts in the morning to ‘no regrets,’ at having at least tried to unite progressive forces by the end of the caucus.

“We did what we should have done,” he said. “We were participating in this process in good faith. Now, Québec solidaire made the decision to isolate itself, it made the decision to be intransigent.

“QS has refused to put the common good over its partisan interests. It defines them.”

He flatly refused to consider the political defeat as a major slap in the face, or consider that his leadership has been weakened as several analysts said over the long weekend.

“It’s a stage,” he said. “We had to go through this stage. What will the final result be? We’ll see it on the night of the elections.”

He then invited disgruntled members of QS who might still want to work with the PQ to come on down.

“There is a place here for you,” he said.

He bristled, however, when shown a column written by Facal in the Journal de Montréal, which said the PQ is taking on water.

“Let’s stay grounded in reality,” Lisée said. “Only three parties can take power next year, the Liberal Party, the CAQ and the PQ.”

But in the other trench, QS was positively cocky about the weekend results, a move that will be capped by the election next Monday in the riding of Gouin of one of QS’s new spokespersons, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois.

Ironically, the PQ chose to not run a candidate against Nadeau-Dubois in a spirit of cooperation as talks on a wider non-aggression pact between the two parties unfolded.

Now the PQ will have the popular former student leader who is hoovering up money, supporters and votes — many who are PQ — in its face on a daily basis in the legislature along with the sharp-tongued other QS spokesperson Manon Massé.

Pumped, the two media darlings Massé and Nadeau-Dubois are talking big – even saying QS (14 per cent in the polls) will be the Liberal giant killers in the 2018 election and not the PQ or the surging CAQ.

Worse for the PQ, QS has decided to make nice with another splinter sovereignist party, Option nationale, which gives QS a direct pipeline to those hardline independence voters of Jacques Parizeau’s generation who are still out there making party donations.

QS is indeed thinking big, refuting the notion that getting the left-wing to w0rk together is about as easy as herding cats.

“What bothers me is when I hear analysts describe the Liberal vote as a homogenous, monolithic block and these voters are mere peons who can’t think for themselves,” Nadeau-Dubois said Tuesday.

“I think the best way to beat the Liberals is to convince people who vote Liberal to no longer do that. For that to work we have to have a vision of society that mobilizes people and above all stays away from policies that divide or exclude people. That is what has consolidated the Liberal vote for years.”

Like Lisée, Massé was also moving on.

“It is time to turn the page on the idea of electoral pacts,” Massé said, accusing the PQ of hiding its real motives in the talks, which was to “get themselves into power using QS as a stepladder.”

Battered by the experience, Lisée declared the days of negotiating with other parties are over and the PQ will make a go of it alone.

In fact, things are easier because, as he said, the party can be itself, without having to pander to others to get them on board.

“Now that this is behind us, we are freer to be completely ourselves and to clearly express the path that we propose to Quebecers,” Lisée said at the news conference. “Clarity is our path to victory.

As for the future, he said entire books could be filled quoting people who have predicted the decline and death of the PQ.

“We are going to rebound.” said Lisée. “We have crossed this necessary step and now we are going to bounce back and be the alternative to right-wing, tax cutting, service cutting proposals from the Liberals and the CAQ.”

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